Building AI for Education in Zambia: Why Clarity Matters

My name is Jeffrey Mdala, and I am an AI Engineer, founder of Zambian Online Education Company (ZOEC), and builder of eskulu, an AI-powered learning platform designed around the Zambian ECZ curriculum. Over the years, I have learned that one of the biggest challenges in technology is not just building systems — it is making sense of unclear, messy, and incomplete information in a way that becomes useful to real people.

That challenge is especially relevant in Africa, where innovation often happens in environments with limited resources, fragmented information, and fast-changing needs. Whether I am working on education technology, AI systems, or digital products for local users, I keep coming back to one principle: clarity creates impact.

Why unclear information is a real technology problem

In many African contexts, data does not always arrive in a clean, structured format. Sometimes it is incomplete. Sometimes it is noisy. Sometimes it is spoken in mixed languages, local expressions, slang, or poor audio quality. If you are building AI products in Zambia or across the continent, this is not a small issue — it is part of the daily reality of engineering useful systems.

As someone who has been self-teaching and coding since 2016, I have seen how easy it is for technology conversations to become too abstract. But when you are building for real users, especially students, teachers, and schools, abstraction is not enough. You need systems that can handle confusion, detect meaning where possible, and avoid pretending to understand what is not actually clear.

That mindset has shaped how I build products through ZOEC. It is also one of the reasons I created eskulu during the COVID-19 period in 2020 — because students in Zambia needed accessible, practical learning support, not theory for theory's sake.

My journey from student to AI engineer and founder

I did not enter this space by accident. I started coding in Grade 12 after graduating as the best Grade 12 student at Thornhill Boarding and Day School. From there, I kept learning across multiple disciplines — mathematics, computing, electronics, AI, digital systems, and entrepreneurship.

My academic path took me through Copperbelt University, where I studied Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering, and later to Cavendish University Zambia, where I pursued Computing. That combination gave me a strong technical foundation across both hardware-oriented and software-oriented thinking.

Along the way, I worked in different environments that taught me how technology connects to society:

• Paycode Africa, where I travelled through nearly all provinces of Zambia while working on systems connected to the FISP programme
• IHS Towers, where I served as a Quality Auditing Engineer Intern
• Unicaf University Zambia, where I worked as a Junior AI Engineer while still studying

Each stage strengthened my belief that African innovation must be grounded in local realities. We cannot simply copy and paste solutions from elsewhere and expect them to work perfectly in Zambia.

What I learned from building Zedpastpapers and eskulu

One of the most important milestones in my journey was building Zedpastpapers, which now serves more than 200,000 users every month. That platform taught me something powerful: when you solve a real educational problem well, adoption can grow far beyond what you initially imagined.

Later, I built eskulu under ZOEC, with a larger vision in mind. Today, eskulu has reached 500,000+ students across Zambia by offering notes, past papers, marking schemes, quizzes, and AI-powered support for Grades 6 to 12. My long-term vision is bold but practical — I want to help create a future where there are AI tutors in every Zambian classroom and where Africa builds its own learning intelligence systems at scale.

That vision is not just about software. It is about educational access, local relevance, and making sure young people in Zambia are not left behind in the AI era.

Innovation in Zambia requires resilience

Building in Zambia is rewarding, but it also demands resilience. Infrastructure constraints, funding gaps, digital access challenges, and market education are all real. Yet I believe these constraints can also sharpen innovation. They force founders and engineers to focus on what truly matters.

In my own journey, that focus has helped me keep moving even when the path was not straightforward. I have had the privilege of seeing my work recognized in meaningful ways, including:

• Winning Business With a Purpose at the X Pitchathon by Accessbank and MTN in 2023
• Placing 3rd at the Yango and Zindi Data Science Hackathon in 2024
• Reaching the Top 5 in the ZICTA Innovation Programme with eskulu

I have also been invited to national-level events, met the Minister of Technology multiple times, and attended a ZDA Business Forum where I was in the same room as the Presidents of Ghana and Zambia. For me, these milestones are encouraging, but they are not the destination. They are reminders that locally built technology can earn serious attention when it addresses real problems.

Why African AI must be practical, local, and honest

There is a lot of excitement around AI right now, and rightly so. But I believe African AI must be built with honesty. If information is unclear, the system should not manufacture certainty. If users need curriculum-specific support, the platform should be designed around that context. If students in Zambia are preparing for ECZ exams, then our tools should reflect the actual educational structure they live in.

That is how I approach both product development and consulting work. Through MAY and Company, I support businesses with AI consulting, web development, software engineering, and generative AI integration. Through ZOEC, I continue building educational systems that serve learners directly.

I also keep investing in my own skills. Certifications such as GPT-4 Foundations: Building AI-Powered Apps, Amazon Bedrock, and AWS Lambda Foundations have helped me stay current as AI systems evolve. But even with technical growth, my core belief remains the same: the best technology is technology that works for people in their actual environment.

The bigger mission behind my work

When I look at Zambia and the wider African continent, I see enormous untapped potential. I see young people who are capable, curious, and ready to build. I see schools that need better tools. I see businesses that can become more efficient with the right AI systems. And I see a future where African founders do not just consume global technology — we shape it.

My own story has been built on discipline, self-teaching, experimentation, and long-term thinking. From starting out as a student who loved learning, to building platforms used by hundreds of thousands, I have come to appreciate that meaningful innovation is rarely glamorous in the beginning. It is usually repetitive, technical, frustrating, and deeply human. But if you stay committed, it compounds.

Conclusion

For me, building technology in Zambia is about more than code. It is about solving real problems with clarity, humility, and ambition. It is about creating tools that fit our context, serve our students, and contribute to Africa's digital future.

I am still building, still learning, and still pushing the vision forward through ZOEC, eskulu, and my consulting work. If you are interested in AI-powered education, custom software, or practical AI solutions for your organization, I would love to connect.

Explore eskulu and the future of learning in Zambia, or reach out to me for AI consulting and software development at jeffmdala@gmail.com.